


edge of our hope, end of our time

by kuro49



Series: 200 subs promptathon of 2020 [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Drift Compatibility, Drift Sex, Drift Side Effects, Ghost Drifting, M/M, Multi, Spitroasting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:00:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22608157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: It's easy to fall for them without thoughts of any of the consequences when there is no future to associate himself with.Jason never thought he could climb back inside of a Jaeger after Bruce. Turns out, he is drift compatible with them all.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake/Dick Grayson/Jason Todd/Damian Wayne, Tim Drake/Jason Todd/Damain Wayne, implied past Jason Todd/Bruce Wayne
Series: 200 subs promptathon of 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1622572
Comments: 6
Kudos: 136





	edge of our hope, end of our time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SublimeDiscordance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SublimeDiscordance/gifts).



> originally posted to [tumblr](https://setsailslash.tumblr.com/post/190708034141/good-god-your-askbox-is-open-for-prompts-well) while it was still gen and then i got to editing and ended up with robinpile instead 😂 there is slight hints of bruce/jason but can be read as gen. 
> 
> will be slowing down in my promptathon fic"lets" because vacaaaay but i'll be back on my bullshit as soon as i'm back :DDD

Jason remembers how a ghost drift goes in distant memory. 

Bruce was always good in that he is a blank slate, never brought a thing into their driftspace and took everything that Jason offered as his own. 

Except. The after effect was a buzzing sense of weightlessness that echoed inside of him. He’s not floating or flying, he’s at the cusp of a sharp long drop. And it’s nothing he can grasp especially on their worst days when the feedback from their drift goes rampant between them even without any of the machinery that should make it possible.

But it’s real and it’s true.

Jason’s hand moving before his head could truly register the motion, already following the way Bruce moved his. He was a shadow connected at every place, sewn to the man he calls his co-pilot.

When Jason dies ten miles off of the Gulf of Aden, Bruce pilots their Jaeger back to shore all on his own. Circuitry suit burning the entire way through skin to scorch flesh, co-pilot torn from his head while they were still connected. 

That was the last time Bruce ever steps foot inside of a Conn-Pod again.

Coming back to the Jaeger Program was never supposed to be like _this_.

Jason looks at Dick Grayson, the Program’s golden boy and tells him: “You don’t want me inside your head.”

They have both had Bruce Wayne as a co-pilot, the difference being Dick came out unscathed while Jason died. 

“Let me decide that for myself, Jay.” Dick answers with a smile despite the dark bruises under his eyes. He is in his drivesuit and they are standing in the Conn-Pod next to one another.

There’s something a lot like trepidation crawling up Jason’s spine. His heart kicks up a beat, each pulse a thundering boom to echo inside his helmet. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He felt like the sharpened rough edges of something ready to shatter on impact on a good day, he cannot imagine how Dick could navigate that.

“Lil’ win—”

“Don’t fucking call me that.”

Their LOCCENT officer chooses that moment to come over the speakers, and Barbara’s voice leaves no room for anything otherwise when she asks them both. “Ready for the drop?” 

For Jaeger pilots like them, it’s an ingrained response. They echo one another when they answer, “Ready.”

[ ... Neural Handshake Initiating ... ]

Three. Two. _One_. 

They drop.

It’s biological, this drift of theirs. It’s a fit of their heads fitting tighter than the way their drivesuits can pull across their shoulders. Even with each piece settling over top, giving them the necessary weight, it’s a pull that has them feeling electricity spark across their skin.

It’s a singe.

It’s not enough though.

Because they need all the warm bodies encased in cold metal and put to the test. Jason is one more in a long line of sacrifices. The Kwoon looks and feels the exact same when he steps foot inside of it once again. There is an air of indifference, and it’s funny to learn nothing is sacred anymore. Not even _this_. 

What truly stings though is the sight of Bruce standing on the sidelines in a dark suit.

“Drift compatibility doesn’t mean shit anymore, does it?” Jason spits out because the man might be the Marshal now but he was once Jason’s co-pilot too. And something hits like a dull solid pang when it is a replacement candidate standing on the other end of the mats, bo-staff in hand. 

Jason doesn’t wait for an answer, he turns to Tim Drake to say: “I’m not going to dial down my moves.”

“Okay.” Tim’s lips quirk upwards at both corners, vicious and sharp, his grip shifts where it curls around the staff. “Then neither will I.”

They each make their first strike against the other. And then again and again and _again_.

There is a rush of blood, exhilaration in their veins. Sweat at their temples and it drips. Tim is good even if it physically pains Jason to admit to it.

Maybe drift compatibility is not the joke here, maybe it’s Jason. Because he is on his back, pinned and stunned when Tim draws the last point between them, bringing it to an even score. It’s unmistakable, he knows this feeling.

The end of his bo-staff is millimeters from grazing at Jason’s throat.

“Three-three.” Tim says to him.

The world is coming to an end. 

If this isn’t the time for desperation, then there probably isn’t one. They are the last stand, a last ditch effort, one final score if Jason’s ever seen one. Bruce goes as far as to test his own son with Jason. 

“I imagined him differently.” Damian says to start.

And Jason fucking _scowls_ at the brat.

He feels them in his head, their thoughts lingering like an afterthought.

Having access to every crevice of someone else’s mind is not something to be desired, let alone a thing he would do to himself again and again and again like it’s a special kind of punishment he thinks he deserves. 

It’s one thing to have nothing buzzing inside of his head, and another to have it full to bursting at the seams. To Jason Todd, drift compatibility is akin to having a conversation with a stranger in the pouring rain or shrouded in the dark of an alleyway, and finding a thing that he wants to hold on to for the rest of his life.

He is Dick watching his parents’ death. He is Tim stepping foot inside of his first Shatterdome. He is Damian being kept out of the pilot placements despite his perfect simulation scores.

They fill his head with their thoughts, and they press into the core of him until they become him.

Jason didn’t ever think he could experience this so many times. They are his last moment when that last thread of his connection to Bruce snaps, and he’s dragged under the waters of the Gulf of Aden streaked in Kaiju Blue.

From beneath the waves, it glowed neon green when the bright lights of their Jaeger passes over him. Bruce burned during his last run, and Jason did too.

Jason inhales and they with him.

Tim fits neatly inside of Jason's head. Like perfectly aligned boxes stacking one on top of another.

Dick fits differently. Like a downpour of warmth cascading down the line of his spine, filling up every little crevices.

Damian simply _fits_. And there is no way around it when the kid's mind touches his own and it is all he can think about even as they move in tandem, and their Jaeger with them in extension. Jason doesn't think it is entirely fair except the exhilaration of that first groan of their titan has a laugh startling out of him.

Looking over to his co-pilot, Damian simply smirks at him when asked: "Having fun, yet?"

End of the line, end of their days.

It's easy to fall without thoughts of any of the consequences when there is no future to associate himself with.

"You only like me because I'm all there’s left."

Jason points out to Dick when the man has him sprawl on his back in their narrow bunks. His tee is gone but so is Dick's. When Dick rocks his hips down, they both fucking groan out loud at the pressure and that sharp eviscerating feeling of pleasure that cuts straight through to their core. Dick draws Jason's bottom lip between his mouth, bites down on the soft yelp. His tongue burns hot with every hiss of his words made so close. "Don't be a baby, Jay."

Dick's spine is curved, his hands smooth down the planes of Jason's chest, fingernails running gently over the circuitry scars made across his torso. It's a sight all on its own, memories of the cold seeping into his bones when the water pressed in from every side. Jason hates the way Dick pays so much attention to them.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Jason tugs Dick back to him, brings their mouths together again, arches the small of his own back to grind his half-hard erection against Dick's. "That's all for the brat."

Jason still has Tim in the back of his head from their practice simulation in the morning, Damian in the forefront of his mind from their drop this same afternoon. And now he's got Dick pressing him into the thin mattress and taking his cock in hand. Dick's grip is wet with spit, a wide stripe of it made across his palm by Jason's tongue when asked.

"Can they feel you still?" Dick asks, his voice drawn low and soft, like a caress.

Jason nods, eyes squeezing shut, shudders when Dick's thumb dips at the slit and rubs the precum from the head of his cock down his hard aching length.

"Then I better make you feel so good that they come too." Dick waits for Jason to open his eyes again, his grip easy and slow, not the tight hot clutch that Jason wants to rock his hips into.

"I—" Jason moans around the light squeeze of Dick's hand around the base of his cock, teasing him along the edge of how good he could make him feel. He tries again on patience he didn't think he still had in him. "I didn't think you're the sharing kind."

"I'm not." Dick's eyes are impossibly blue when he looks at him, his smile a promise all on its own. "That's why I'm the one fucking you and not _them_."

They fuck him anyways.

Tim slips a thumb between the seam of his lips and drags the pad of it across the edges of his teeth, tips his head up so his throat is curve to him and his mouth is opening wide. Jason feels like there is still the slick acidic burn of Kaiju Blue across his skin, except it's never even been his skin to start. Off of the high of a fresh kill, it's hard to tell himself from his co-pilot from the way their Jaeger would _move_ for them.

Jason is so far inside of Dick's head that he imagined the man could feel the slow draw of breath he takes inside of his lungs when Tim fucks into his mouth. His tongue works at the underside and it's extraordinarily sloppy. He's got drool running down his chin, dripping on to the tiles while Tim threads his fingers into his hair to tug him right and deep. He feels Tim getting harder inside of his mouth, he also feels the moment Damian replaces his fingers with his cock.

"What'd Bruce say if he found you all like this?" Dick asks from where he is leaning against the open door to the pilot's shared shower room.

Damian's hands curve over Jason's hips, the blunt edges of his fingernails leaving crescent moons behind like that's the only permanent thing he's left in his wake. "If you truly believe Father doesn't already know—"

"Little D," Dick grins and it's sly as he comes to them, still in the t-shirt and sweatpants he left their changing room in when Bruce called him for a debrief as soon as they were out of their Jaeger, "I was just teasing."

Jason messily pulls off, wipes the back of his hands across his mouth, and he thinks there is something clever on his mind but Dick's grin tells him he knows exactly what's on his mind. Jason makes a very particular sight and it has Tim groaning with how good he looks for them. They want him the way he wants them. And he _wants_ them.

"Teasing." Tim echoes with a twist of his mouth, a smile that looks more natural on Damian than it should on Tim but the feedback between them is fresh, the disconnect like a live wire that is still sparking flames. "I think we can do better than that though, can't we, Jason?"

It is like every moment they've been connected inside of their minds are barely enough.

He breathes out, lashes quaking. And they with him when he answers: "Yes."

They share him.

And he lives for every last moment he gets of all of them.

Jason walks out, already suited up. So is every remaining Jaeger pilot they’ve got left in the program: Dick standing with Damian next to Tim at the other end of the hallway leading to their Conn-Pods.

Bruce asks him to hold on, pulls him back one last time to say. “When you drift with someone, you feel like there’s nothing to talk about. I don’t want to regret all the things I never said, Jason.” 

It is a testament to how long he’s been waiting to hear this from Bruce when his eyes are prickling in what might actually be tears. It’s salty and it stings.

“B, you don’t need to.” He lets the man tug him into his arms, and his voice gets muffled but that’s okay too. “I know them all.” Jason tells him. “I always have.”

It’s a lie, but it’s a very good one. Jason has always known Bruce in that painfully intimate way, understood the man for who he is and who he cannot be for Jason even if push comes to shove comes to out right blows. And there were plenty of that even during their best days. It's inevitable, like so many things he's lived through.

Jason has spent a long time resenting Bruce. Maybe it’s about time he moved on from that.

Their world has been coming to an end for a very long while now, it would be ending on a good note if they do not have to die inside of one another’s head once more.

When he makes the drop into driftspace this last time, he thinks of all their good times.


End file.
